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Nate Silver left FiveThirtyEight amid layoffs and Elliott Morris, ABC's new hire immediately set about ruining it. A threat he sent to conservative polling company Rasmussen Reports:
As Nate Silver puts it, Why, unless you’re a dyed-in-the-wool left-leaning partisan, would having a “relationship with several right-leaning blogs and online media outlets” lead one to “doubt the ethical operation of the polling firm”?. I agree with Silver's overall attitude on the new direction of his company: hope ABC will stop use of 538 brand so it isn't associated with me.
Some people are probably mad at ABC for being partisan hacks but frankly that's business as usual. I'm mad because FiveThirtyEight was one of the only good analysis sites out there and these vandals are going to turn it into another factory pumping out generic progressive sludge. God damnit! 538 was the best in the business, where am I supposed to go for election forecasts now?
The goal is the pluck out your lying eyes. There can be no feedback in the system to cast any doubt what so ever on whoever the regime picks to rule next.
Yawn. Pointlessly lazy and uncharitable. If the 'regime' plans to manufacture consent or whatever for the next 'ruler' by excluding a single slightly R-biased pollster from 538 forecasts, thereby increasing Biden's predicted chances of victory by 0.1% on a site no ordinary voter reads, I suggest the regime tries a bit harder.
If there are no sites predicting an R win or even a close win when someone R leaning googles, they may be less likely to care about voting. Seems like a no-brainer to use your control over the media to make this happen by any means necessary.
This is pretty uncertain. Just as plausibly it could discourage Democratic voters by making them complacent.
Maybe, that's true. Unsure if there have been any psychological studies on this effect, would be interesting to know for sure. However, clearly elite dems subscribe to my prediction, otherwise why buy 538 and libbify it?
Insofar as there may be some discrepancy in the treatment of Republican pollsters, I think the more plausible explanation is some kind of motivated reasoning against/semi-conscious suspicion of right-wing organisations on the part of the 538 team rather than some attempt to fix forecasts. You see the converse happen on RCP sometimes.
This is just silly. ABC bought 538 to change forecasts by 0.1% and therefore somehow deliver elections to Democrats? No-one thinks that conspiratorially in real life.
I do, seems like common sense. Why do you think they wouldn't take an action that helps them? The action not instantly guaranteeing them a win doesn't mean its not worth taking. It's one action among many
It's hardly common sense; the business of business is business, and it's seems a reasonable assumption to suppose that, in the absence of convincing evidence to the contrary, ABC's use of 538 is ultimately driven by business incentives.
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